Success has put the Melbourne Storm in esteemed company

IT'S become the cover-all description for Melbourne as league watchers ponder how Storm has gone undefeated through such an arduous start to the NRL season.

Storm returned from a successful trip to Leeds to account for St George Illawarra in ridiculous heat in Round 1, then beat title contenders North Queensland in Townsville before outlasting 2012 minor premiers Canterbury just five days later at home.

How do they do it ?

"They just win," is the most common answer.

And it's no fluke.

Over the past 10 seasons Storm was shaded, just, by only one other football team in the land for the best winning record.

Geelong, which won three AFL premierships in the past decade, pipped Storm by 0.34 per cent, and both were miles in front of the best from Australia's other football codes.

The golden Storm run coincides with the beginning of Cameron Smith and Billy Slater's careers. And they rank first and second on a list of the best winning percentages among modern players with more than 200 NRL games.

None of Geelong's 200-gamers could match that, although current Cats captain Joel Selwood's 111 wins from just 135 games is an almost unbeatable record.

The third of Storm's "big three", halfback Cooper Cronk, is fourth on the NRL list, just behind Storm's inaugural captain Glenn Lazarus.

All have career-winning percentages of 70 per cent or better, over long careers, too.

A quick squiz of the top 10 players, which also includes Storm veteran Ryan Hoffman and current Melbourne assistant coach Kevin Walters, is also telling.

Every player has been at Melbourne, Brisbane or Canberra, the three clubs at which Storm coach Craig Bellamy has spent his 30-year career.

Coaches talk about winning habits breeding success. Bellamy knows what they are, brought them to Melbourne and passed them to his players.

And according to Storm skipper Smith, developing a "winning culture" starts and ends with those players who run out each week.

On an individual level he said the best were driven by two things: the quest for continual improvement and an insatiable competitive instinct.

"Champions have high expectations of their performances . . . and have a complete commitment to perfection," Smith wrote in Secrets of Inspirational Captains.

"They always want to be better than the opposition."

But even Smith knows he can't win on his own.

He, Slater, Cronk and Hoffman know what's needed to win, but also require every player on the list to think the same way.

Cronk said the club's leaders set the example and reminded all players that winning was the result of getting everything else right. "First and foremost it's about instilling good habits in training, effort and attitude," he said this week.

"If you get them right then the performance and results take care of themselves.

"Then you get that winning culture and habit where guys come into a system and know what's expected of them and see the results when they do. They build confidence out of that."

What's expected of them is to not take what has been achieved to date for granted because three wins in March is just that, nothing more.

"Sustaining a winning culture takes time," Smith wrote. "We have non-negotiables and whenever you see a guy take a short cut, which is very rare, a senior player pulls them up straight away.

"Whenever new guys join our squad the senior leadership group sits them down straight away and lets them know about our team and our club culture -- our values we expect everyone to adhere to.